


an evil spirit

by rossieash



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Believer Ryan Bergara, Dark Crack, Demon Shane Madej, First Meetings, Gen, M/M, Mild Gore, Other, Slow Burn, Temporary Character Death, future shyan, sassy dybbuk Shane
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-08 20:23:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15251340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rossieash/pseuds/rossieash
Summary: He should probably feel ashamed of his silly little death now, but sweet Jesus, there were really not that many pranksters in the middle ages as there is now, and Shane's actually kind of proud of it.A story in which one sassy demonic entity and one innocent believer meet and happen to discover just how much they have in common.





	1. one time in Poland

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this thing with the usage of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dybbuk_box  
> (it was supposed to be dumb crack but i changed my mind and it gets better in the next chapter i swear?)

Not all demons were born in Hell or fell from Heaven, some were just particularly talented at making mistakes during their mortal lives. Shane wouldn't call himself talented, he had an exceptionally bad luck, as he told himself and others throughout the centuries. 

Was he a bad person? Not really. Did he make a deal with a demon? Not exactly. Did he regret his decisions as a human? He probably should, because spitting at that asshole priest was probably not a very clever idea, especially when he was already on his way to be buried 6 feet under ground soon. But he truly disliked the man, and since there was no life after death, as he supposed back then, there was no reason not to play a little, pretending it was both tuberculosis (but did the villagers in the XVII century know that name? Shane doubts they did) and, ha-ha, demonic possession that killed him. He had his fun, though, before choking on his own blood. And so did Jan Madej's body and humanity die, as a possessed (but not really) carpenter in a small country in Poland, several centuries ago.

He should probably feel ashamed of his silly little death now, but sweet Jesus, there were really not that many pranksters in the middle ages as there is now, and Shane's actually kind of proud of it. Only kind of, because after his heart gave out the last thump, his spirit was ripped out of the lifeless corpse and sucked into the wine cabinet standing nearby. It took him quite a long while to get properly accustomed to being a weightless, invisible mass, hovering inside the box for years and years. Sometimes he had a chance to jump out of it for a while, he messed with some objects, moving them just so that the current owners of the box would notice, sometimes even hopping inside another living person's body, but it was crowdy there, so Shane never stayed for long. He travelled the Europe, changed the box once or twice, slept for dozens of years, woke up for several hours and went back to sleep. 

There was no reason for him to live, he didn't feel a thing, no emotions, no temperature, no... nothing. He was empty. At some point Jan forgot how it felt to be alive, he stopped feeling compassion for humans, maybe even made them do a few bad things out of boredom. A suicide here, a murder there, a few mental illnesses and alcohol addiction, but it was all meaningless. He heard people calling him Dybbuk in the XIXth century, "an evil spirit". Maybe, who was he to judge.

But then, then someone took his box very far away, away from Europe, behind the Atlantic Ocean, to America. 


	2. how to get someone to write a book about you in a few easy steps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which eBay is a wonderful(ly irritating) thing and the box changes its owners. Several times. It's totally not Shane's fault.

Then some Dude bought the box on something called 'eBay', but Shane (he changed his name in the meantime, because well, new country, new identity, isn't it?) wasn't very happy about it. EBay, huh? He's never considered himself as someone (something?) incredibly valuable, but he was not that cheap either, and when the Dude opened _his_  box like the ignorant douchebag he was, Shane has had enough. Several nightmares later and the Dude was still fine, the demon thought impatiently, crawling underneath his mother's bed, whom he was given as a birthday present to (duh). Shane poked around her mind for a bit, irritated, scratched the floor under the mattress and made it smell of cat's urine, just because he was feeling particularly creative. At some point her heart stopped. Oops? He quickly jumped inside his box, grinning with his non-existent fangs at the darkness, waiting for what was yet to come in the near future.

The near future was no better, as he learned pretty soon, being just an object sold by this eBay thing  _again_  (really?) to some Guy. Shane sat on his head in the night, playing with his hair. Well, maybe rather pulling his hair of his head, but that's just the detail. He has also had some fun with turning on and off the lights, because honestly, modern technology was the best. He loved it. And he kind of started to like the Guy, because the student, as he learned by going on a little sight-seeing trip around his small apartment, flying over piles of textbooks and landing nearby spilled coffee on his desk, seemed to be writing a book of sorts about him. Shane saw a shiny screen, with words written on it. Words about him. About the electricity and, the demon laughed, proud of himself, about his hair falling out, ever since he became the owner of the box. He may have burned his house later, but it was just an accident, he was just playing with the candles, he didn't mean to make one of them fall onto that ugly red carpet!

Then a Professor bought him, and well, he has indeed written a book about Shane. But only after he, too, experienced some of the pleasures of being the owner of the more and more powerful demon, who grew stronger with each misery and death he brought on humanity. Maybe hive wasn't the thing causing the Professor to develop some  _damn_ respect towards him, but coughing up blood, only while being in close proximity of his box, just because Shane pushed his invisible hand to his insides and buried his claws in the wet, warm guts, didn't turn to be something easy to forget. But the book was okay nevertheless, the Dybbuk, as he was called, thought, lazily turning the pages to one side and then to the other over and over again for the old man to finally notice them moving on their own without wind. Oh, and he did notice. The next thing he did, though, was to contact priests.

Shane had to admit to himself that he may have been just a tiny bit concerned about their visit. He decided to calmly wait for them, sitting on the top of the probably very expensive mahogany wardrobe, just looking, waiting, falling asleep for a few minutes a few times, because 'just waiting' was boring. No, he wasn't afraid of being exorcised, he really wasn't (he was). Two men came into the house, they talked for a while on the first floor, with Shane quietly looming over them, but that conversation wasn't interesting either, so he moved the painting on the wall, just a little. He was more than only a bit disappointed, when no one noticed the difference. With a risen brow and a shit-eating grin on his face, the demon kicked the object from the inside of the wall so hard it flew a few feet ahead, before landing on the floor with a loud thump. Seeing the rapid movement of the men, he just shrugged, crawling back to the second floor, to his nest on top of the wardrobe.

During the next few hours nothing happened. Or actually it did, but it was just a few old guys screaming and shaking crosses in front of his box, and shit, Shane was even kind of sorry for them, because they really, truly believed the box was sealed with the Dybbuk inside. 

He kept his existence low for a few months to see what the Professor was planning to do with him. Some people came to the house to look at his box, some took autographs from the author of the book, some said they felt uneasy inside the building, but Shane was just smiling to himself at the placebo effect, since he did exactly nothing, but observe. He learned some new things about humans of the XXI century, about the magical thing called the Internet, about mobile phones, about the lack of faith and the ever-growing blasphemy in this new world (he may have seen some adults-only movies late at night, funny thing, the telly). And just as he was pretty comfortable living in this new house with his new pal Professor, the old man donated the box to the paranormal museum. What a jerk.

But now? Now Shane's even sort of grateful, because if he hadn't landed in that fake af junkyard of dusty objects which were only supposed to be possessed (they weren't, well, maybe one was moving on its own, batteries, cool stuff), he wouldn't have seen the brightest soul he's ever seen during his centuries long life. He wouldn't have met Ryan Bergara.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comment pleaaaase <3


	3. whisper

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello there guys <3 the post-mortem gave me some positive vibes, so i decided to get myself together and finally write the first chapter  
> i hope you'll enjoy!

Of course, he didn't know the man was called Ryan Bergara at first, because how would he? He's not reading minds without entering someone's body for God's sake! With years and years of experience Shane's learned that to take control of one's body, that person had to at least touch his box, without it, he could just wander around, maybe ruffle their hair at the most. He's also learned that hopping into a human who was wearing a cross had... well, not exactly a pleasurable aftermath, if it even was possible (sometimes not, he's happened to touch people in his invisible form and got burnt like twice, because of the damn jewellery they wore). And the small guy with fear in his brown eyes and sweaty palms nearly brightened the whole gloomy room with his shiny aura. A believer, Shane thought, it's been rather a while since he saw someone with such a strong faith in paranormal. 

The demon left his box and levitated above the visitors, smelling pretty good cologne and hair shampoo. For the first time he's noticed that his man (well, not his, but he wanted that energy so,  _so bad,_  he just had to have him, and oh, he  _was_ _gonna_  make it happen) was there with accompany of another man. Dybbuk lowered himself from the ceiling to better hear their voices, as they started talking. 

"I can't believe you made me come to this fucking place, man," the shorter one began, running his fingers through his hair. "I already feel like I'm going to vomit." 

"Calm down, Ryan," the other one (the taller one, with glasses and beard) laughed, leaning on the barrier that separated the visitors from his box. "Even if something decided to kill you, at least you'd have your proof, right?"  

The believer rolled his eyes at this one and bit the inside of his cheek, at which the demon couldn’t help but grin, circling around his well-built posture like a predator would circle their prey. Shane stopped hovering over the brown-eyed man's shoulder, not daring o touch his skin, but leaning close enough to make the hair on the back on his neck raise up. 

"Hello there,  _Ryan_ ," he whispered, but as soon as the words left his non-existent mouth, the young man jumped away like someone poured a bucket of icy water straight onto his head. Shane quickly backed away, probably no less surprised than the men near him, and crawled up the wall to the ceiling again to monitor the situation. 

"Holy shit, Brent!" Ryan screamed, nearly falling over the barrier, the museum ticket fell from his hands to the cold floor, but he didn't even seem to notice, as he was busy putting himself together, gripping the cross like it was the only thing able to keep him alive.  

"What the fuck are you doing?" Brent rapidly turned at the loud cry of his friend, which echoed against the walls of the large room, sending him a concerned look, then scanned his body up and down for any signs of injury. "Stop yelling or they're gonna throw us out of here." 

"But dude! Something fucking whispered in my ear!" 

The demon froze. What? Impossible. Nobody he's ever met was able to register him talking, or even yelling at their face. Something was wrong, something went terribly wrong, but there was nothing he could do right now. Not that he didn't absorb some of the energy that left Ryan's body at the shock, but shit, Shane didn’t plan this out to happen. 

"Jesus, man," Brent sighed, rubbing his hand over his face, "Please, don't scare me like that again." 

"I'm not joking! Something's here and I don't know how about you, but I'm not staying here a minute longer." He turned his back to his box, heading to the exit in a speed of a lightning bolt, Shane followed not that far behind his back, quiet this time, thousands of thoughts running through his mind, but no idea seemed good enough for now. As Ryan nearly ran up the stairs, skipping two or even three steps at once, the dybbuk felt his power slowly draining the farther he went from the box. He's only managed to go after the believer to the parking lot, seeing sun not from behind the windows or curtains for the very first time in a long, long while, but Shane knew that was it. He was bound to stay, and he's never felt such rage flowing though his existence, as when he saw the grey and slightly dirty Dacia leaving the museum's parking with both men inside. 

Shane stayed, of course, already thinking of his way out. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pleeeease do comment <3  
> (if u see mistakes pls correct me bc english is difficult)


	4. the damn thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now that you have a book, here's its sequel:  
> How to get your own body, a story by Jan 'Shane' Madej.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ily guys for your support <3

Shane had to possess someone, there was no other way. He had to get that someone to touch his box and get it out of there (somehow, he wasn’t sure exactly how he’d do it just yet). He thought of taking the body of the museum’s owner, but he needed a human that wasn’t known to the press and such and whose disappearance or unexpected behaviour wouldn’t make anyone beat an eyelash. He stayed, waiting for the right opportunity, searching the museum’s halls in the spare time and well, he only had spare time, so yeah, long hours of wandering the hallways mostly all by himself. 

Once he’s even overheard a conversation between the owner and some man on the phone.

“What do you mean? That I should apply more security measures? But people already have to prove themselves to be consenting adults and write their names down to see the damn thing.”  _The damn thing_ , Shane gritted his teeth, his shadow became slightly more prominent on the wall, but not enough to be noticed by the oblivious human. “Okay, fine. I said okay! I’ll see what I can do.”

Now that was indeed suspicious. Did his dear Ryan complain about their first meeting? He just shrugged, not really worried, and looked around the owner’s office a few days after the phone incident, finding a book of visitors laying on the covered in various boring papers desk. Opening it turned out to be harder than the Dybbuk thought, because of how far it was standing from his wine cabinet, he managed, though, the cover was heavy, but the yellow pages were just fine, light enough not to be an issue. Shane sat on the desk-lamp, moving the paper from one side to the other with his claws. There were a few Ryans here, and a few Brents, too, but there was only one place in the book, which had both of them written next to each other.

Ryan Bergara, the demon read, eyes nearly glowing yellow with unknown arousal and excitement in the darkness of the tiny room. Ryan Bergara, Los Angeles.

But when he’s returned down the stairs, happily sliding down the handrail, the spirit was greeted with yet another unexpected and this time definitely  _not cool_  surprise: his box was captured in some sort of glass walls with a note on them saying “don’t touch”. Ironically, he wanted the exact opposite from the visitors. And maybe he was gonna pay the owner a little friendly visit, but the man wasn’t even in the same building just now and the demon’s powers were limited. The Dybbuk sighed, landing of the floor with a quiet thump, followed by a small cloud of dust rising up in the dry air.

Shane hadn’t been patient as a human, he had not even pretended he was, but now that the things had changed a little, time felt just... different for him than for the living. Time passed and the demon didn’t, goodbye shitty mortality, see you in hell or maybe never. He used to be patient as an entity, sleeping for years, doing nothing, a little murder here or there and that was it. Now, he was definitely _not_  patient again, pacing around his wine cabinet, growling at the empty walls and scratching the glass, but the stubborn material seemed untouched. Giving up was not his style, but there was also no point in constant waiting for something good to happen, because the possibility of a random passer-by willing to the break his box from the glassy prison was nearly as low as the chance of seeing the believer in the museum again. Shane pressed himself through the tiny gap between the walls surrounding his box and closed himself inside his small home, soon enough falling asleep due to his energy being drained by leaving his place for such a while.

The demon didn’t know how long exactly he was unconscious, but as soon as he was awoken by the cleaning lady who worked in the museum on every Monday morning, a plan suddenly appeared in Shane’s mind. He left his box, stretching his invisible body (well, it may not have been a body per se, but some sort of a mass of energy for sure) inside the walls of the glass-case as much as he could, and eyed the woman, in her late forties, with a bored expression on her calm face, a few strays of light-brown hair springing free from the ponytail and no cross or crucifix to be seen on her body. Shane had almost forgotten about her existence at all, such average and bland was she, but Nancy (that was the name written on a planchette pinned to her brown sweater) was a perfect way of escape. Maybe not fully breaking free for once and forever, but at least the first step in his plan.

The Dybbuk grinned, when the woman removed his prison to clean the box, and she could have been wearing gloves, but (no worries, Shane, calm down) she always managed to accidentally press a random piece of her wrist or forearm to the wood, and this time was no different. And he knew where the camera was.

***

At first, he wasn’t entirely sure it would work, but damn, he happened to be pretty smart, too, and just a few hours later the demon was floating around the staircase of a block of flats somewhere in the suburbs of Las Vegas. And no, he  _did not_ make the nice lady steal the whole box, because how dumb would that be. He (or rather she, but he was inside her, so maybe it’s “he”... it was complicated. They, they was a good word) had stood with his back towards the security camera, pushing the wine cabinet doors ajar only to fish out one of the two 1920 pennies that were inside. Shane genuinely hoped it would work, because being pulled out of a warm human body into the cold air with almost no power to come back to his place didn’t sound nice. But it worked. They hid it in the pocket of their suit, and the entity sat silent inside Nancy head, as she finished cleaning and went on her walk home, during which Shane soaked up with her knowledge of this new world. They intentionally lost the penny for the demon to be picked up by some other people, because well, since he’s already kind of out and on the hunt for the brightest soul he’s ever seen, he might as well be in need of knowing certain skills necessary to properly function in the XXI century. 

Shane was eager to learn, because it was just way too easy. All he had to do was to get inside someone and stay there for a few hours, sometimes longer if the person was educated, and boom, that was it! He even kind of felt like he had wasted a few good centuries being closed in his small world, but now, now he was going to properly fill those black holes in with delicious information (and the energy of the living, too, he’s not an idiot and wasn’t there to sympathize with anybody). So he jumped, and jumped, and jumped. Thirty-something IT specialist with bad eyesight, lesbian writer with a broken heart, florist who had lost her family in a car accident, Spanish teacher with feet fetish, teenager with depression and a few blunts hidden in his jeans, nurse who was extremely fond of fishing, and so on. 

Humanity was fascinating, but. There was always a  _but_. A single, short word, but an exceptionally annoying one.  _But_ , existing in a living person’s mind wasn’t always as good as it seemed to be at first after having spent years alone. Yes, it was warm. Yes, a steady flow of energy. But there was also the never-ending chain of thoughts, which turned out to be quite tiresome when one was exposed to it on a daily (and nightly, sometimes, too, dreams were just awful) basis. Within a few days or maybe even weeks (he was not a walking calendar, now was he), Shane wanted his own body, his own, personal body to discover the world with, a warm suit of meat and a skull all for himself. And his box, to be sure that the eventual, possible destruction of the coin would not leave him entirely lifeless. 

The nurse knew a pathologist and dropping the penny off to his pocket wasn’t difficult. They kissed goodbye with Shane rising one brow somewhere inside his mind. He stayed a night inside him, the next morning was sunny and warm, and the demon’s existence was bubbling from excitement, when they stepped into the morgue and left the coin on the white, shiny sink. The Dybbuk seated himself on a big lamp at the ceiling, spending the day on examining the corpses with doctor Kerbra. Mostly old people, with their wrinkled skin and white hair, there was one guy (or at least his parts) brought in after a motorcycle accident, a pretty girl who died because of lung cancer and... a very tall dude in his late twenties with committed suicide by swallowing so many painkillers his guts stopped working, but it was already late and the doctor wasn’t eager to perform “another autopsy? Really? But my shift ends in 5 minutes!”. The body stayed untouched, but from the spirit using Kerbra’s calloused hands to place the coin in the dead man’s palm. 

The morgue might have been left by the pathologist alone and empty, as he locked the door behind himself, but little did the human know of the newly alive-but-not-really patient he was yet to meet the next day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i liiiiive for kudos and comments <3  
> (also bookmark or subscribe to keep track! it's going to be more interesting soon!)


	5. John Doe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in which i put "how is a freezer in the morgue called" in google search  
> btw there are 6 ppl who subscribed and 4 who bookmarked (yet none of these shows on the work which is a little sad tbh)   
> im really glad u guys like it tho and want to keep track with my fic <3

Ryan couldn’t sleep ever since the incident. He didn’t tell anyone, nobody would believe him anyway. It was just like he was 17 again and a spirit poked their finger into his cheek on the deck of Queen Mary. He knew that Brent was worried about him, he knew he had called the museum to complain about that accident, because the skeptic actually cared about ‘Ryan and his kind’. It was almost cute, he had to admit.

Ryan sort of wanted to come back to the museum and try to get something similar on a tape, he was working at Buzzfeed after all and video editing was his job. It shouldn’t have been such a problem to capture some interesting stuff, maybe not this particular entity (entities?) itself, but surely something, since the whole building seemed to be damned. 

He thought too much, sleeping for 4 hours a night, and looked like a zombie during the day. The thing was, he believed. Ryan just knew it was real, even if Brent couldn’t hear the same.

It said his name and Ryan reminded himself that fact a few times a day. It said his name. And it said  _hello_. At this point he wasn’t even that scared, maybe more interested in the whole phenomena. The spirit didn’t threaten his life, it didn’t hurt him, it just said hi. The realization hit the believer hard. 

He didn’t sleep that night at all.

_Hello there, Ryan_ , was ringing in his mind like he was never to forget it. And maybe he wasn’t indeed.

***

The body of John Doe was quivering inside one of the morgue’s cold chambers.  The metal coffin clattered, as stiff muscles were seemingly coming back to life. Shane stretched his energy to fill the form from feet to neck, adjusting his position in it, before diving into the head. And for the first time in centuries, he found himself in physical pain. 

There was no heartbeat nor breath, and the coldness felt like the skin was being nipped with thousands of needles at the same time. The lungs acted like they were filled with water and unable to move and the sharp stabs of pain in the brain and muscles were probably no good for him either. And the stomach, oh shit, stomach full of pills that killed the person before him (the spirit thought he would have probably wanted to die, too, if left in such pain), at first it was numb and cold, but when Shane forced the heart’s firsts beats and sucked a breath with his whole new mouth, it exploded like a fire inside his torso. 

Shane’s instinct told him scream and curl into fetal position, instead only a quiet growl left his lips, limbs only trembled and eyes snapped open with a mute plead for help frozen upon the brown pupils. But it was too late to back away now. The heart was slowly, but steadily pumping blood into the veins, breaking the blood clots, while trying to get through. Everything either burned, was itchy or felt like it was being stabbed multiple times, over and over again. It was awful. The longer he was stuck in the coldness, the more the body was awakened, and the more he wanted to get out. Through the waves of pain striking his body and blinding his mind, at some point nausea made its way up his throat.

Shane forced himself to focus and channelled all his will to move one of his feet, pressing it against the cold metal wall at the back of the box, and tried to press, so that it would maybe, just maybe, open the... drawer he was inside. It didn’t work. He sucked in a deep breath, already wondering about how he was stuck there till the morning and rethought the idea of leaving the dying body alone to return just before autopsy. The coin fell from his palm and rattled on the silver surface. Just one more try, he told himself, bending his forearms so that his hands were touching the ‘ceiling’. Shane pushed down, and to his great relief, his box moved, creating a gap between its opening and the outside of the cold chamber, where he pressed his numb fingers inside and pulled.

He bruised his arms and hurt his jaw, when the body fell down to the ground. He vomited, twice, and kept chocking on his own spit for the next few minutes. At least he’s got rid of the poison, didn’t he? And someone was going to clean it anyway. In the darkness surrounding the room, he crawled away from the puddle of what was left inside the stomach, already feeling a bit better. His insides were getting warmer, and the blood buzzing in the veins didn’t feel like it was gonna burn its way out of the body to the surface anymore.

Shane had almost managed to forget how it felt to be a human. Well, of course he wasn’t exactly human only because he took one’s body for himself, but all those tiny, meaningless things he didn’t have to do for centuries, moving real limbs of flesh and blood, even breathing and keeping the heart going was so complicated! But he actually  _had_ the body and that was important, he could deal with pain and those petty details.

There were only  _his_ thoughts inside the skull, only  _his_  movements, only  _his_  will and existence and no one else to bother. Totally worth it.

He even tried smiling, once he was enough away from the stained floor and managed to roll onto his back. It was just a weird grimace for the first time, he sniffed and tried again, this time properly moving his lips to form a grin. And lied there, naked (he didn’t really notice before, but it didn’t matter either), in the darkness, getting accustomed to the new circumstances and proud of what he’s already achieved, waiting for morning to come.

***

“We should do a series about it.”

“About what?”

“You know, ghosts and stuff. Maybe some criminals, serial killers, suspicious things like alien abductions? I bet there will be like dozens of people interested in the topic.”

Brent just swallowed a sip of coffee, nodding at his friend.

“Yeah, sure.”

“I’m not joking.”

“I know.”

Ryan smiled, fixing the headphones on his neck. 

And so it began.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kudos, constructive criticism and your thoughts are always welcome <3


End file.
